In 1860-O the United States Mint released a Liberty Silver 50c Fifty Cent Half Dollar Silver Coin struck in solid .900 Silver and Certified Slabbed and Graded by PCGS AU Details.
Bound for New Orleans from New York with passengers and commercial cargo, the side-wheel steamship SS Republic was lost in a violent hurricane on October 25 1865.
In August 2003, Odyssey located the shipwreck at a depth of approximately 1,700 feet in the Atlantic Ocean about 100 miles east of Savannah, Georgia.
During archaeological excavation of the site, coins were picked up individually by the Remotely Operated Vehicle 'Zeus' with a delicate limpet to protect the coins surfaces. Each coin was carefully conserved and encased in a Tamper-resistant holder with a unique bar-coded label from the Numismatic Guarantee Corporation which was crossed over to PCGS.